Blitzlichter auf Europa

No to Broadcasting Licence Fees!

In Switzerland, a battle is raging about information and the media. Swiss national-conservative and neo-liberal circles have launched a campaign to abolish public broadcasting licence fees. On 6 March, the Swiss population will go to vote in a referendum. The TV and radio licence fees – popularly known as the “Billag” – are going to cost 365 Swiss francs to guarantee continuity of TV and radio provision in the four Swiss national language areas. The provision of these services is expensive, but political and cultural information is a priority for public discourse and democracy.

The aim of the campaign is clear: public service should be dismantled and privatized. In the eyes of the campaigners, the media are infiltrated anyway by a left-wing agenda. So, reactionary right-wing activists long to establish an information service and democracy as they think best. Just look at the US to see how that works. In bowing to the pressure of arguments, the campaign supporters appear flexible, yet this changes nothing about the fact that accepting the proposal for “no ‘Billag’ licence fees” could revolutionize the entire information system. Currently, the opinion polls suggest that this is unlikely, but it’s still important to offer some opposition.

That’s even more important because now a second conflict looms. The national press agency (the Swiss Telegraphic Agency, SDA) is also supposed to be made more efficient or ‘liberalized’. The new director (and former accountant) is starting by setting a good example: his salary is rumoured to be 450,000 Swiss francs. The press agency circulates news in four languages – it’s audited and politically neutral. The sad thing about this is that the SDA is owned by the media, but mainly big organizations like Tages-Anzeiger or NZZ have secured such generous (discounted) rates that it is running at a loss. It’s almost tragic to see how the print media is cutting back the branch that it sits on. Anyway, it doesn’t seem to care about news and information. The profits from the newspapers were used a long time ago to found free newspapers and advertising platforms that conventional newspapers are sacrificed for, if necessary. Who wants to take them seriously anymore?

Both developments are a genuine threat for democratic discourse and particularly for culture. If public broadcasting and the press agency want to earn profits, there is no longer any space for broad-based cultural reporting in the official media. At least, the SDA has already taken the precautionary step of abolishing the cultural editorial office.

While this is tragic, it’s based on clear logic: ‘death to the hovels, peace to the palaces’!

History tells us what to expect as the aftermath.

Menasse, “Die Hauptstadt”

Think Pig!

A pig is on the loose, deep in the heart of Brussels! It makes headline news in the free newspaper Metro and the police are helpless – or disinterested. One pig more or less – what’s all the fuss about? The city has enough building sites. In his novel “Die Hauptstadt”, Robert Menasse shows us the EU metropolis as a vibrant city where an anarchic temperament meets bureaucratic sophistication. From the outset, in various locations the pig encounters the six protagonists with whom Menasse unfolds and connects the strands of his narrative. One of the characters, the ambitious Greek woman Fenia Xenopoulou has been assigned a position in culture in the EU’s corridors of power – and no flower pots are rewards here. To transfer as quickly as possible to a more important role, she has to try and engineer some excitement. For example, with a glorious jubilee project to celebrate the European Commission’s 50th anniversary. She gives the task to her colleague, Martin Susman. Under the slogan “Auschwitz – Never Again”, which was the post-1945 spirit of rebuilding Europe, he plans a large-scale ceremonial event.

Robert Menasse knows his way around Brussels. In his 2012 essay “Der europäische Landbote” (“The European Courier”), he already concentrated in detail on the EU. In this novel, he succeeds brilliantly in mocking bureaucratic processes in Brussels, while at the same time making a passionate plea for a united Europe. He relates eloquently, humorously and intelligently how Susman’s idea gets caught up in bureaucratic wrangling. Like a metaphorical signal (or rather like a conspiratorial omen?) the confused pig repeatedly criss-crosses the paths of the main characters. Including a retired professor, who with the bravado of desperation compiles a draft plan for the utopia of a new Europe, which involves establishing an ideal joint capital in Auschwitz. Menasse manages to connect discourse and high drama, tragedy and satire. It is easy to see why this brilliant novel was awarded the German Book Prize.

Some of us have already made our acquaintance with Siri and Alexa – the two helpful personal assistants from Apple and Amazon. Dialogue with these partners is restricted to rather simplistic things. But chatbot-assistants are the technology of the future. We’re reminded of this at the latest by the small ads circulating in Silicon Valley with ‘a call for authors’. Suddenly, literature is also relevant in the field of automated communication: as a stimulator and coach for chatbot-messaging assistants that are searching for a specific ‘character’.

A recent project in The Netherlands shows what this type of coaching could look like in practice. In November 2017, as part of the now traditional campaign “Nederland leest”, the popular writer Ronald Giphart and the algorithm-based Asibot got together as a writer team that was to add a new chapter to Isaac Asimov’s legendary short stories “The Robots”. The book featuring the new story “De robot van de machine is de mens” (“The robot of the machine is a human”) was distributed to libraries countrywide.

The Asibot received scores of literary works to ‘read’, so he could improve on linguistic competence and personal development. He was then allocated a coach for the subsequent writing assignment – the writer, Ronald Giphart. He kept an eye on the ‘fingers’ and intervened whenever the writing faltered. The result is interesting and worth reading. This project poses a series of questions, for instance, about creativity and authenticity: “What is the role of the human author and how can artificial intelligence be used as a writing tool?”, as Folgert Karsdorp, the joint project coordinator at Amsterdam’s Meertens Institute describes it.

The early answers seem reassuring. Even if Asibot was personally active, Ronald Giphart’s skill as a writer was repeatedly called on to contribute sections to develop the plot. The main reason for this, according to the developer Karsdorp, was because Asibot has a short memory and soon forgets the text’s thematic focus. An artificial author therefore still cannot handle a complex text. But what about flirtatious dialogue for the linguistic operation of a shower? This area is more likely to produce successes, if the chatbots have good coaches on their side.

This year’s Solothurn Literature Festival is set to explore these kinds of questions in the productive area of literature and interaction design.